2008: A Retrospective
Things I’m most grateful for:

My first Agile deathmarch with a casualty of 1. Me. Lesson Learnt: Always agree on Acceptance Criteria before doing anything.
Learning from a diverse bunch of people: my fellow Exxies (folks from Exoftware), my client teams and especially Agilistas such as TJ, Pascal Van Cauwenberghe, Vera Peeters, Duncan Pierce, David [...]

Congratulations! THE BIG DAY you’ve been training for for the past 364 days will soon by upon us. It’s time to cash in on the benefit of the thousands of Agility exercises you’ve been putting into practice at work. Let’s hope all the agile flexing of both brain and brawn pays off. 
Ho! Ho! Ho! Contenders [...]

Half way through my Christmas shopping mission, I meet up for coffee with my friend TJ, even though he drinks neither tea nor coffee. I tell him about an article I’d just been reading about people’s fitness and gyms.
‘According to the highly experienced instructor in the article, most people put in around 7/10 amount of [...]

Ho! Ho! Ho!
(Over coffee during an Agile training course)
Student: You weren’t what we were expecting.
P.: What do you mean?
Student: We were expecting a male trainer.
P.: I see.
Student: Actually we were expecting a big man with a beard.
P.: You’re right. I’m no Santa Claus.
What you see isn’t always what you get
A recent conversation with a student [...]

Change Happens
P.: I hear you’re an Agile Coach.
Agilista: You are correct.
P.: What do you do as a coach?
Agilista: I change people.
P.: In my experience, you can only change yourself.
Agilista: I change people. Like psychologists do.
P.: My mistake. I thought you said you were an Agile Coach.
With great power comes great responsibility
Agile Coaching is a people [...]

A training gig in Helsinki means an early start for Christmas celebrations this year. My Finnish guides help brighten up my brief, yet adventurous, 4-day visit with their cultural commentary.

‘There’s no specific Finnish word for “please”.’ It seems that it’s implied in the structure of what you say and how you say it. ‘That’s why [...]

My friend Thoughtful Jim is the silent type. Whenever I pose a philosophical question (such as ‘Can we be paid well for doing what we love?’), instead of accusing me of overthinking, TJ usually replies, ‘I can’t answer an important question just like that. Let me think about it.’ TJ’s a deep thinker. And when [...]

Still Life
P.: Richard’s a nice guy.
Z: He’s changed a lot since meeting a lady friend recently.
P.: (Pauses) Has he changed for the better?
Z: Definitely. Richard’s got potential.
P.: (Smiles)
Z: I like to think of him as a work-in-progress.
Life as Art
I’d never heard of someone being described as a ‘work-in-progress’ before. My friend Z. is an artistic, [...]

‘Exoftware has been ranked 6th in the 2008 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Ireland. Rankings are based on average percentage revenue growth over five years. Exoftware grew over 1300% percent during this period.’
- Deloitte Ireland

One of the hardest things about becoming agile, [...]

New Kids on the Block
My first ever commercial IT project was to tweak an existing application that sent out financial news by email. I remember really enjoying the challenge. I learned how to set up my local dev environment. I learned about the release process using foil packs of tea as release tokens (creativity was [...]